Welcome to the round-up of travels and blog posts for 2024! This year has been the year of “more” – more creativity, more travels, more hiking, and lots of fun, too. Over the course of the year, I visited 33…
Castle Rock above Lake Tahoe
Castle Rock is a great view of Lake Tahoe on the border of California and Nevada. It’s a hot, forested hike on a summer day (guess when I hiked?), but the views at the end make it worth the effort…
Exploring Fern Canyon
In Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, there is a very famous trail known as Fern Canyon. It’s so popular, in fact, that you need a permit to park in the parking area May 15-September 15. It’s worth it: Fern-covered walls,…
Scrambling Daylight Peak
In my ramblings around the internet looking for cool hikes to add to my ever-growing site about Death Valley National Park, I ran across the fact that I could hike to the top of an unnamed mountain called Daylight Peak…
20 Lakes Basin Loop from Saddlebag Lake
The 20 Lakes Basin Loop above Saddlebag Lake just outside of Yosemite National Park along the Tioga Road is a stunner at its minimum. The alpine scenery is jaw-dropping from the moment you set foot on the trail and never…
Scrambling up Lake Hill (aka the Chocolate Drops)
In my perusals of unofficial routes in Death Valley, I ran across three hikes that seemed fascinating (to me, anyway!) in Panamint Valley: Panamint Dunes (which is actually an official route, though its trail is pretty much invisible in many…
Lake Tahoe from the Basalt Overlook
To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure if the trail I took from Skyland to the Basalt Overlook (just off the Tahoe Rim Trail) is all that official. But I found it on AllTrails, so that counts for something, right? …
Spectacular Sierra Views from Piute Pass
Piute Pass was one of my favorite trails in the High Sierra. (A few of the other contenders were Saddlebag Lake (20 Lakes Basin), Kearsarge Pass, and San Joaquin Mountain.) The sheer beauty along the path up to the saddle…
118 Miles on the Pacific Coast, Mount Hood, and Mount Rainier!
Last time, I wrote about my adventures in the High Sierras of California. Here’s the rest of the trip – including volcanoes in the Cascade Range! From Yosemite, we drove north through Sacramento and Redding and up to McCloud Falls. …
81 Miles in the High Sierras!
I’m back!! I know I’ve taken off quite a few weeks on the blog, but I’ll be back to regular posting soon. For now, here’s what I’ve been up to for the last five or so weeks as my van…